Series 0401: SYMBOLS
A Rant About Love, Kin-keeping, and American Diffusion
There’s lots of ways to see symbols. I’m American of mostly western and central european descent. My parents liked museums, and I honestly remember thinking, if my ancesestors had been more dashion about their theft, perhaps I wouldn’t have had to be raised in the Chicago suburbs. When every prince charming was clearly also a pirate? I mean… no. These stories are bonkers bananas, and hide horrible realities. I hope to avoid straight cooperation here, references are drawn with appreciation. So if and when I get it wrong (cause oops, product of my environment and efforst) I hope this project finds correction and community to create a new context pool for awareness. Not in the cloud, where data-brokers use our information to target us or manipulate our patterns. But somewhere else, where the virtual village is more than fantasy—less like sheep farming.
Memories brought me here. Your past presents the future, it does not define it. OTHERWIS3 is a game of choice and recall, in that order.
Think about how Sigmond Freud led to both Carl Jung and Edward Bernays. The former was a european student while the later was an american nephew. Both recognized the intrinsic offering Freud presented with summary statements about developmental complexes and how to manipulate silly-bunnies like me back to the straight and narrow. he move with the Sufragettes and Lucky Strikes? Yeah. It was genius. But for real… had anyone given the women more than their senses to trust (in a world that diminsihed the validity of sensitivity), cigarettes probably wouldn’t feel so damn thrilling. Le sigh.
Think now that we are in Luxembourg City at a cafe. There is jazz music from a hidden speaker nearly swallowed by the vaelvet curtains and walls covered in wooden frames. Outside, you see the Alzette and the old Roman fort. The forgotten crossroads… still remembered in stories about Melusine and how that castle came to be. A stranger smiles at you. American, from the looks of it. Like children, who can’t remember their lessons, you wonder if it’s worth the effort to engage them. But they smile. They offer to share a card game—it’s like a reading. It only takes a couple of minutes. Despite all reason, you say yes. Ten hours later, you do not know why you’ve told this stranger your life’s story or introduced her to around. You know you tried to kiss her even though she had a boyfriend, she didn’t say no. She cried and wished you well, hoping to forget that brief touch of lips, but knowing her cherished reality had been shifted.
Think now that we are in Granada Spain, tired after walking the shadowed paths at Alhambra. So many cultures crossing paths in time—not destroying, but contributing—to the sprawling beauty of carved stone, diverted water, and shaped plants. She asks if you feel the collaboration across time…you watch the shadows dance before the volumetric blades of light from the geometric carvings. You’re mind slips a bit… the eight pointed stars… so common. You think of Innana, a compass, the necklace that dude in the Patriot gave to the girl he loved. Wait…What was the question?
These collapsed retracings of events led me to this project. Crying over cobblestones, where art collapses culture into a familiar common story that is contextually relevant with different pressure on personal conflict triggers. When art and archetecture flow with memory, we can feel it. It changes us. Brings us together. That is when design becomes art, and the story art of OTHERWIS3 is entirely determined by you.
Because it seems to me that the reciepts are due. And it may be time to have a friendly debate with some managers.
At the start of this, the angry customer was m’heart, the manager was m’brain. I needed to ask, “Do the old gaurds’ interpretations of the symbols serve my understanding? I’ll answer that someday, but back then, I didn’t even know there might be something else. Something more wodnderful and layered… and a bit future now…
Error 401 and April Fools.
There comes a time when every femme must say “Fuck that noise”.
In the world of OTHERWIS3, symbols represent, ahem, situations. Each Situation Card has three states of being. A challenge, a change, and a conclusion, summarized with one word on the left, center, and right side of the card.
Jungian symbols are less like answers and more like weather reports. They don’t tell you what to do; they help you identify the kind of situation you’re in. When I burned out, I could politely be labelled “nightmare-fuel”. Tears. So many tears. And there was always plenty of warning. Eventually, I realized, I had no respect for my gut. That “intuition” thing dudes hate on… well, something had to change. I gave it a name (Kristal Carin’) and started flipping cards to find my perspective.
A mountain doesn’t mean ambition in the abstract. The Mountain appears when life feels steep, when effort must be sustained and perspective is earned slowly. A river doesn’t symbolize “change” as a concept; it shows up when things are already moving and resisting the flow would exhaust you. A wall arrives when limits matter—when protection, refusal, or containment has become the central condition of the moment. Symbols, in this sense, are situational diagnostics. They describe how reality is structured right now, not why you feel a certain way.
Jung understood this well. He treated symbols as living patterns that arise when consciousness meets circumstance. They are not moral instructions or metaphors to decode, but images that crystallize a psychological situation into something graspable. Jung thought the psyche, when faced with complexity, does what it has always done: it draws a picture.
There’s also a quiet humor in this. A humor that ultimately explains the adoption of memes. The psyche is remarkably blunt. If you feel lost, you might notice a labyrinth. If you are hiding, there’s a cave. If you are pretending, it hands you a mask. No subtlety, no flourish—just a clear sketch of the terrain. Symbols don’t flatter; they clarify. This is why Jungian symbols endure. They scale. Yet… I will always have doubts about selling dream analysis.
Still, symbols seems work allegorically, whether you’re facing a career decision, a marriage, a breakdown, or a breakthrough. They don’t shrink to fit the ego’s preferred narrative. Instead, they say: Here is the situation. Act and consider.
Wisdom, then, is not in interpreting symbols too cleverly, but in recognizing yourself in them without argument. When a symbol appears repeatedly—in dreams, art, obsession—it’s usually not asking to be solved. It’s asking to be respected as an accurate map.
And maps, as it turns out, are far more useful than explanations when you’re already on the road.
